I started getting involved in research my sophomore year. For the College of Arts and Sciences, every student is required to do a senior research project. So they work with an advisor on coming up with a project and a research question. They do a whole proposal process. And then your senior year, you do the research and then get to present it at the end in a symposium that Stetson holds. We are gaining skills that we can use for grad school-- for future careers. And we learn a lot about the different equipment to use, different data analysis skills, as well as just more about the things around us, and what we study.
So as an Aquatic and Marine Biology major, I've gotten to do two significant internships. One of being sea turtle research, so I would go on to the beach every morning around 4am, and survey the beach checking to see if the sea turtles laid nests or crawls, log those, and when those hatched, we'll see how successful the nests were. My second internship was with a company called CMERA, where we would go to Clearwater and tag sharks and stingrays. When I was a little boy, all I wanted to do was swim with the sharks. So to be able to actually hold a shark in my hand and actually be able to do research like Steve Irwin did is absolutely mind boggling to me.
In the business school, we don't have a senior research project, we have a capstone project. And a capstone project is just a way to show what you've learned in the business school including management, marketing, business ethics. You take that knowledge and apply it in a way where you can see the results of the classes that you've taken, and it can make a difference in the real world.
